Category Archives: Women in science

Scott Aaronson wrote a new post on the Shtetl Optimized** reflecting on the previous thread (that I referred to in my post on Amy’s triumph), and on reactions to this thread. The highlight is a list of nine of Scott’s core beliefs. This is a remarkable document and I urge everybody to read it. Yes, Scott’s core beliefs come across as feminist! Let me quote one of them.

7. I believe that no one should be ashamed of inborn sexual desires: not straight men, not straight women, not gays, not lesbians, not even pedophiles (though in the last case, there might really be no moral solution other than a lifetime of unfulfilled longing). Indeed, I’ve always felt a special kinship with gays and lesbians, precisely because the sense of having to hide from the world, of being hissed at for a sexual makeup that you never chose, is one that I can relate to on a visceral level. This is one reason why I’ve staunchly supported gay marriage since adolescence, when it was still radical. It’s also why the tragedy of Alan Turing, of his court-ordered chemical castration and subsequent suicide, was one of the formative influences of my life.

!! (***)

In the sacred tradition of arguing with Scott I raised some issues with #5 and 4# on Scott’s blog. Two of Scott’s points are on the subject of (young) people’s suffering by feeling unwanted, sexually invisible, or ashamed to express their desires.

I was pleased to see that those feminist matters that Scott and I disagree about, like the nature of prostitution, the role of feminist views in men’s (or nerdy men’s) suffering, and also Scott’s take on poverty, did not make it to Scott’s core beliefs.

Happy new year, everybody!

* The word triumph is used here (again) in a soft (non-macho) way characteristic to the successes of feminism. Voting rights for women did not exclude voting rights for men, and Scott’s triumph does not mean a defeat for any others; on the contrary.

** “Shtetl-optimized” is the name of Scott Aaronson’s blog.

*** In my opinion, when a person has an uncontrollable urge or strong temptation or desire to commit a crime towards another individual (or even to inflict much damage on another person when it is not criminal, or to commit other crimes), shame and guilt feelings can be instrumental in controlling such urges.

It was not until the 144th comment by a participants named Amy on Scott’s Aaronson recent Shtetl-optimized** post devoted to a certain case of sexual harassment at M. I. T. that the discussion turned into something quite special. Amy’s great comment respectfully disagreeing with the original post and most of the 100+ earlier comments gave a wide while personal feminist perspective on women in STEM (STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, mathematics). This followed by a moving comment #171 by Scott describing a decade of suffering from his early teens. Scott, while largely sympathetic with the feminist cause, sees certain aspects of modern feminism as major contributors to his ordeal.

Then came a few hundred comments by quite a few participants on a large number of issues including romantic/sexual relations in universities, rape, prostitution, poverty, gaps between individuals’ morality and actions, and much more. Many of the comments argued with Amy and a few even attacked her. Some comments supported Amy and some proposed their own views. Many of the comments were good and thoughtful and many gave interesting food for thought. Some people described interesting personal matters. As both Scott and Amy left school early to study in the university, I also contributed my own personal story about it (and Scott even criticized my teenage approach to life! :) ). Amy, over 80+ thoughtful comments, responded in detail, and her (moderate) feminist attitude (as well as Amy herself) stood out as realistic, humane, and terribly smart.

* The word triumph is used here in a soft (non-macho) way characteristic to the successes of feminism. Voting rights for women did not exclude voting rights for men, and Amy’s triumph does not mean a defeat for any others; on the contrary.

On Wednesday, the Senate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem elected Professor Sarah Stroumsa (homepage) as the next Rector (provost) of the Hebrew University. For the first time since its establishment, the Hebrew University has elected a woman to its highest post of academic leadership.

The situation of the Israeli higher education is complicated and constantly on the verge of a crisis. But this election is a reason for celebration for the HU, and is part of an ongoing change in the Israeli society as a whole.

Professor Leah Goldberg

On this occasion, I would like to dedicate to Sarah and to the HU community a poem entitled “Rainbow”, written by the poet Leah Goldberg. Leah Goldberg was an important scholar and a professor at the Hebrew University, and she is most famous as one of the greatest Hebrew writers of modern times. It is a poem for children, which I also regard as a metaphor of academic and other quests. To further celebrate the event (and in the tradition of Ehud Friedgut’s translation contest of a limerick on Konigsberg’s bridges and Euler), I am announcing an open contest for translating the poem into English. Please email me your translations or post them directly here. (You can find a very rough literal translation below.)

Jerusalem Combinatorics ’93 is the title of a conference I organized that took place fifteen years ago in May 9-17, 1993 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was a conference that was devoted to all areas of combinatorics. The other organizers were Noga Alon, Hélène Barcelo, Anders Björner, and Edna Wigderson. Altogether there were around thirty plenary talks, and about fifty additional invited talks in 10 sections representing various subareas of combinatorics. There were also four special talks for a large audience. Overall, it was a fruitful and a very nice event that I think people enjoyed.

A special aspect of the conference was the unusually large number of female speakers. 16 out of the 30 main plenary speakers were women, and also many of the additional speakers, special session organizers, and other participants. The four large audience lecturers were Vera Sós, who talked about irregularities of distributions, Mireille Bousquet-Mélou who talked about polyominoes, Hillel Furstenberg who talked about Ergodic theory and Combinatorics, and Joan Birman who talked about the combinatorics of finite-type invariants for knots.

A collection of papers by participants of the conference, edited by Barcelo and myself, appeared as Volume 178 of Contemporary Mathematics.